


A Suit of Sable

by Sapphy, SapphyWatchesYouSleep (Sapphy)



Series: Unbalanced 'verse [9]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Psychopaths, Backstory, Childhood, Creeper Peter, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, POV Peter Hale, Peter is creepier than the creeper, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Psychopaths In Love, The Hale Fire, also some children, some animals were harmed in the making of this fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-21
Packaged: 2018-01-12 20:50:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1199781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphy/pseuds/Sapphy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphy/pseuds/SapphyWatchesYouSleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i> Tis now the very witching time of night,</i><br/><i> When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out</i><br/><i> Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood, </i><br/><i> And do such bitter business, as the day </i><br/><i> Would quake to look on.</i><br/>Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2</p><p> </p><p>(Or, the Unbalanced Verse as seen from Peter's perspective)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to Peter's brain. Please keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times.
> 
> The title is part of the line "Let the devil wear black, I shall wear a suit of sables", which is the english languages most poetic declaration of black-hatdom.
> 
> Both that and the summary are quotes from Hamlet, because Claudius is the original wicked uncle

The first thing Peter remembers is lying in his cot, looking up at Talia as she kissed him goodnight, a smile making her cheeks dimple and her eyes glowing a soft comforting gold in the half-light of a nursery.

She’s the constant in his childhood, in a way that even his parents aren’t, because they’re kind of boring and old and too busy to play with him, where as Talia is perfect. She’s always ready to play games with him, despite the eight year age gap, comes up with the best ideas, shares books with him, and sweets, and doesn’t laugh when he doesn’t know how to do something, and is generally the best big sister ever. Peter worships Talia. (When he’s nine he finds out that he can’t marry her. He cries for two days, until she promises that they can still be best friends, even if they marry other people. Peter thinks that’s stupid, because how could he ever want to marry anyone else, but he feels a bit better)

Talia gets kind of boring in her teens though, because she doesn’t want to play with him anymore, and when Peter shows her the new games he found, she screams, and calls him a monster, and tells their parents about the little cemetery of tiny bones Peter’s been populating since he was five. (Just rats and squirrels at first, but later there are cats, and even some dogs, and they’re more fun because they’re someone’s pet). She talks a lot about right and wrong after that, about the importance of being good, and it’s boring but Peter listens anyway, because she’s his big sister and he loves her. His parents make him go to therapy sessions once a week with a tall man who smells of peppermint and tries to make Peter imagine what it’s like to be someone else. It’s boring, but Talia’s grown-up enough that their parents let her take him on the bus, just the two of them, and afterwards she buys him new comics to add to his carefully catalogued collection.

(He buys his first comic when he’s seven, because Wolverine is just enough like a werewolf to be cool, and he falls in love with the vividly painted world where violence has no consequences and people with power are feared and respected. He starts buying other X-Men titles, and Avengers, and the occasional Batman, if it’s an issue with the Joker in it, until he has a whole bookcase filled with them, all in neat plastic binders to protect them).

Talia has various boyfriends as a teenager, but they’re just distractions, little more than friends she holds hands with. Her first proper boyfriend is called Simon. He’s a human from her math class and Peter hates him more than he’s ever hated anyone. Simon’s boring, and stupid, and not even very good looking, but he takes up all of her time, makes her act stupid, like a normal girl instead of like his awesome big sister. He slashes the tires on Simon’s bike and fantasizes about killing him, burying him in the woods with the squirrels and the cats.

Talia goes to college, and it’s the worst thing ever. He only sees her at the holidays, and even then she smells strange, and talks about people he doesn’t know and things he doesn’t understand. The howl sounds horribly empty without her voice, and Peter sleeps with one of her old t-shirt’s bunched up by his head, even though it barely holds any of her scent anymore.

His parents have more time for him, now Talia’s gone, which is horrible. They watch him all the time, and ask why he doesn’t have friends, and what he does when he disappears into the woods. He phones Talia to complain, and she just laughs and tells him they only worry because they care. Peter wishes they didn’t.

Talia finishes College when he’s fourteen, but having her back isn’t as wonderful as he’d been imagining. They’ve grown apart, and though she obviously still loves him, they don’t have the unbreakable bond that they had when she was younger. She gets a job teaching history at Beacon Hills High, and boys suddenly want to be Peter’s friend, because his sister is the hottest teacher in the school. They disgust Peter, but he’s nothing if not pragmatic, so he strings them along with promises of inviting them over, and Talia smiles and tells him how pleased she is that he’s finally making friends.

Peter doesn’t get a girlfriend until he’s eighteen, his first semester at college, and he decides he doesn’t like being a virgin. Her name’s Ellie, and she’s pretty in a very ordinary way. Peter discovers that if he tells her how small her breasts are, or mentions that her teeth are crooked, he can make her cry, but because she’s his girlfriend, she doesn’t hit him, or run away. He can just keep doing it, keep hurting her, and she lets him. She gets boring quickly, but breaking people never does.

He has a lot of girlfriends, and some boyfriends, in college. He doesn’t especially care what gender his sexual partner is, boys are easier to manipulate, if harder to make cry, but they’re a lot more likely to stand up for themselves, and the relationships never last long lest one of them carry out their threats of calling the police. Girls he can string along for longer before they get suspicious. Some of them never do. Some of them try desperately to get him back, even though he spends their time together systematically destroying them.

When Talia announces she’s getting married, Peter isn’t cross, not really (even though he thinks her fiancé, a beta from the nearest pack, is a complete waste of oxygen). He doesn’t need her attention now, not the way he did when he was a kid. He’s got other ways to amuse himself now. He tells his girlfriend she’s terrible in bed, and kills his professor’s dog, and that’s enough to get him through the ceremony with a smile on his face. (His girlfriend comes with him, wearing a blue gauze dress. She looks beautiful. He doesn’t tell her so. Talia wear white lace that makes her look fat, and is so nervous she’s nearly green when it comes to saying her vows. He tells her she looks radiant.)

It turns out the reason Talia had looked fat on her wedding day was Laura. Peter generally dislikes babies, and resents that the bonds of pack make him feel protective towards this one. He does his best to be a good uncle, buys her toys and teaches her socially acceptable games, and it’s worth it to see the way Talia smiles. She tells him how glad she is that she made him go to therapy, how happy it makes her to see him living a normal life. He decides to major in psychology, because it gives him an excuse to play with people’s minds. Talia tells him she’s never been prouder.

Derek is born only a year after Laura, and this time Peter’s given a freer rein, is trusted not hurt or corrupt the child. He sets out to be Derek’s best friend, and manages a good nine years before Derek begins to realize that there’s something not right about his cool uncle. He tries to avoid Peter, but Peter has had a lot of practice at not being avoided. He tells Talia how happy he is that he and Derek are close, and she sees to it that they spent a lot of time together. She tells him how pleased she is that her boys are getting along, and Peter thinks wistfully of the time when that was singular, and he was her whole world, but he’s a realist, so he sticks close to Derek and competes with her idiot husband for her time and attention.

(Cora he has no time for. He spends more time with Derek, under the pretense of freeing up Talia to play with the baby, and almost never has to actually hold the horrid squalling thing).

She can’t prove anything, but he knows Talia suspects his role in the Paige debacle. She says nothing, but she watches him with unfriendly eyes, and he pulls back, leaves Derek to his own devices and focuses his attention on his work, and finding out just how far he can go with his new girlfriend before she finally has the sense to be scared of him.

As it turns out, that was the worst possible thing he could have done, leaving Derek alone to brood, because Kate Argent is nearly as good a manipulator as Peter, and has the added bonus of pert breasts and not being his uncle. She worms her way into his heart, and by the time Peter actually meets her, recognizes a fellow monster and smells the wolfsbane on her skin (so easy to make Derek’s heart beat just a little faster if you add a small amount of poison to your perfume), it’s too late. Two days later, when Laura and Derek are at some High School kegger, she burns the Hale house to the ground, with the family inside. Peter will always wonder whether she regretted that Derek didn’t burn.


	2. Chapter 2

In the weeks and months following the fire, his memories are patchy at best, brief periods of consciousness melting seamlessly into days of vivid dreams. He’s in a coma for two months, and even when he’s officially out of it, he spends most of his time unconscious. There’s a hole, deep inside his soul, where Talia ought to be, so he fills it up with rage in hope that that will reduce the pain, and sleeps as much as he can so he doesn’t have to face it. His dreams are full of screaming, and the sick sweet scent of burning flesh, but they’re still better than reality.

A woman visits him in the early weeks of consciousness. He doesn’t recognize her through the pain and drugs, but she smells like he’d fucked her. He pretends to be asleep, and eventually she stops coming. Derek and Laura come once, and then go, and in one of his brief lucid periods, a nurse tells him they’ve moved away. He thinks it’s cowardly, but he doesn’t really blame them. They’re still young, and the house is beyond repair, but maybe their lives aren’t.

After a few months (time is slippery and hard to grasp, but it was spring when the pack burned, and there’s an autumnal chill to the air now) he’s awake almost all day, and eating solid food, so they move him from the main hospital to one of the wings where they keep long term patients. He asks a nurse how long they think he’ll be there, and she just looks at him sadly, which tells him everything he could want to know.

His brain activity is never very severely affected, but he’s been in the long term care ward a week before he can turn his head, and a whole month before his fingers will move when he tells them. His skin he tries not to think about, because if it does then he can’t ignore how hideous it looks. He’s healing slowly, like a human, and there’s no one he can ask about it. The other adult werewolves in the pack are all dead, and Deaton never comes to see him. He theorizes that it’s psychosomatic, a symptom of the trauma, but he’s not convinced. The doctors do skin grafts, which hurt, and slather him antiseptic cream that smells of silver. He thinks of the Argents, and screams and screams until they change it for an iodine based one.

He’s assigned a physio, and a speech therapist, and meets with a psychiatrist twice a week. She gives him a diary to write in once he gets movement back in his hands, and he amuses himself by coming up with more and more outrageous things to write in it.

His medical insurance is good, and he gets a full time nurse assigned to him. She’s proud and stupid, and so easily manipulated it’s almost sad, and has no idea why he insists on calling her Harley.

She fusses and flaps, and gives herself air, but it’s better than being alone, with no one to play with, and once he’s well enough she brings him comics to read.

He sends her to the comic store in the next town over with orders to bring him a copy of every comic they have featuring Daken. The art and writing is frequently terrible, but it cheers him up to know he’s not the only damaged aggressively bisexual borderline psychopathic werewolf, even if Daken isn’t technically a werewolf (and fictional).

His speech is slurred and slow, even after a year in hospital, a combination of neurological and soft tissue damage making saying even a single word infuriatingly difficult. His head fills up with words he can’t say, until one day there’s too many, and they all come pouring out in an unintelligible torrent. His nurse wants to call a doctor, or psychiatrist, but Peter insists that he feels fine. Better than he has for months, in fact. Some of his anger and resentment had fled with the words, and now he feels like he can finally begin to think clearly again, for the first time since the fire.

According to the old papers she brings him there was an investigation into the fire, but with Derek the only witness, and the whole might of the Argent clan behind Kate, there was no chance of a conviction. It depresses him immeasurably that the bitch who killed his beloved sister and left him mutilated beyond recognition is able to walk away scott free, when he might never walk again.

His therapist tells him he needs to set himself goals, and he agrees.

He presents her with a trite list, made up of things like ‘accept my situation’ and ‘forgive myself’, but he makes himself a second, real one. He writes it in Latin, using Hebrew characters, in the back of his least favorite x-men comic. Normally the idea of vandalizing a comic would be anathema to him, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and the issue _is_ nearly all about Cyclops.

It helps, having something to work towards, the image of Kate Argent bloody and broken an excellent motivator.

His speech improves, and, though it takes more than a year, he does learn to stand, and even to walk a few steps.

His physio is impressed, but tells him gently not to expect any further progress, that a few stumbling steps is the most he’ll ever be capable of. The burns have penetrated right down into his joints, left the muscles twisted and tight, and the skin over them is solid and unmovable scar tissue. If he still had his healing, he’d easily be able to fix it, simply tear the joints loose and let them heal up right, but that’s not an option, so he’s left crippled, incapable of caring for himself, let alone avenging his pack.

He rereads the Fatal Attractions x-men arc, and decides that giving up isn’t an option. Derek and Laura are in New York, pretending to be normal people, avoiding the responsibility that should be theirs, so the duty of avenging Talia is his alone. It is his sacred trust, and he will do anything, however risky or morally repugnant, to fulfill that duty.

Alphas are tough, so by the time Talia succumbed to the flames, Peter was already too badly injured to receive her power. It had passed to little Laura. She, Peter realized, was the key to his vengeance. If he could kill her, Talia’s power would pass to him, and that would give him the strength he needed. It was a shame that Laura would have to die, she had Talia’s eyes, but Peter had a sacred duty, and Laura would at least be dying in a good cause.

He’s had years to work on Harley, and little else to distract him, so she obeys him now without thinking, let alone questioning. It’s not all that hard to persuade her to carry him out to the preserve (though explaining about werewolves is a little harder). Transforming for the first time is agonizing, and his joints are just as stiff and unresponsive when he’s wolfed out. Harley gives him a shot of adrenaline, and another of painkillers, and that’s enough to allow him to force his body into moving.

He finds a herd of deer, deep in the forest, and stalks them until he can’t resist anymore, and then he singles out a young doe and kills her. Her golden fur reminds him of Kate Argent’s hair, so he carves the symbol for vengeance into her side, a statement to anyone capable of understanding that he’s committed now, will not be swayed from his mission.

Killing the deer had been little more than an impulse, but when the Beacon Hills Gazette has an article on it a few days later (their theory is that it’s devil worship, but to be fair, that’s nearly always their theory) he begins to see how he could use it. He’s always had a knack for forgery, and his memory is impeccable, so it’s no great trial to write a note in what would appear to be Deaton’s handwriting (although his fingers are still stiff enough that it takes three tries). The hospital have Laura and Derek’s New York address on file, as emergency contacts should anything happen to Peter, and no one questions his wanting it. He debates with himself, but in the end he leaves the note unsigned, and includes a copy of the newspaper clipping.

Waiting for Laura to arrive reminds him of waiting for Christmas as a child, knowing that there will be good things, but that he’s not allowed them yet. He’s a patient person, but not good at delayed gratification, and he grows so irritable waiting for her that even Harley starts avoiding him.

He’d assumed that Laura would visit him as soon as she received the letter, but it’s several weeks before she’s finally ushered into his clinical white room. He’s decided it’s best that Talia’s children not know how close to a recovery he is, so he sits still and silent while Laura talks to him, telling him how she and Derek are getting along, how Derek’s talking about applying for college in the fall, and how she’s been promoted at work. It feels good, having even one packmate nearby again, but honestly Laura and Derek’s lives sound so dull and mundane that Peter really doesn’t feel all that bad about the fact that he’s intending to murder her.

Killing Laura is harder than he’d expected, and not just because he’s weak as a kitten. She’s a link to Talia, one of the few people left who truly knew her, and she’s also someone Talia would have died to protect. He makes himself do it, because it’s the only way to avenge his sister, and despite the guilt, he act murder is just as much of a rush as he’d always imagined. It’s always been something he dreamed of, the ultimate act of control over another person, but until now he’d never been willing to risk it, knowing that his eyes would give him away (one of his more unfortunate girlfriends had taken an overdose, which had been gratifying, but didn’t really count).

He’d intended to bury Laura, or at least get Harley to do it, since she’s pack, and she’d died in a good cause, but in the end he’s too distracted by the power coursing through him, and Harley runs away when he starts to transform. He punishes her for it later, refuses to speak to her, blanks her until she’s desperate to regain his attention and willing to do anything to get it. She’s really a very stupid woman, but for now she’s useful, and there’ll be plenty of time to kill her later.

Derek arrives two days after Laura dies. The territory lines haven’t been reinforced for years, but they’re strong enough that Peter feels it the moment Derek steps over them. Unlike Laura, Derek comes straight away too see, good boy that he is, and Peter pretends to be comatose, glad he hasn’t done anything yet about the scars covering his face. Later, Derek will have a place in his schemes, and even his pack, but for now he needs him as unsuspicious as possible.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in this chapter for... well for Peter and Stiles being Peter and Stiles. I love these guys, but sometimes they creep me the hell out. Also Peter is skeevy and a little bit paedophiley

The first time he sees Stiles, he doesn’t really notice him. In his defence he’s a little distracted. It’s his first full moon since he took Talia’s power from Laura, and he’s already fixated on Scott, obviously the weaker of the two, the better prey. (He hadn’t planned to turn anyone, especially not an awkward teenager, but he’d underestimated the strength of his instincts. He’s used to the half transformation of a beta, which brings with it a wave of rage and bloodlust, strong, but manageable. That is as nothing compared to the animal instincts of the Alpha.) He has always prided himself on his ability to control himself, but with no real anchor (it had always been Talia that kept him human, kept him from losing himself to the bloodlust, and now Talia is gone, burned to death) he has no choice but to follow his instincts. And his instincts say he needs a pack.

It’s only the following night, when he takes Harley’s car and drives to Paradise to let off a little steam, maybe start his search for Kate’s coconspirators, that he realizes that he’d picked the wrong teenager entirely. He’d been wandering, half aimlessly, round the nastier part of town, sure that he’d find what he needed. He usually did. And so when he catches a scent, familiar but as of yet unplacable, of course he goes to investigate. Curiosity always has been one of his besetting sins.

He tracks the scent (spicy and just a little sweet he notices, a hint a cinnamon under all the usual human smells, and an overlay of medication) to an alleyway beside a bar. It's filthy with refuse, the stink of it an assault on his nose, but overlaid on that is the distinctive scent of human blood.

The boy from the woods, the one he hadn’t bitten, is in the alley, squaring up to a guy twice his size. The other man stinks of fear and adrenaline, but all Peter can get of the boy is excitement. As he watches, the bigger man swings for the boy, his movements clumsy and slow. The boy (and how had he not noticed last night how beautiful he is? All pale skin and bright eyes, and a long slender neck that Peter wants to bite) ducks the blow, his foot catching the man in the knee, making him stagger, and his fist hits the underside of the man’s chin as he falls.

The man makes a muffled noise of pain, and the scent of blood strengthened. Bitten tongue, Peter thinks.

The man spits, spraying Stiles with blood and saliva. Stiles laughs and Peter feels his cock harden in his pants. He’d almost forgotten what arousal feels like, it’s been so long. He can’t remember the last time he wanted anything that wasn’t revenge, but in that moment, he wants the boy, wants to strip him down and see just how deep his violent streak runs, whether he can take pain as well as dish it out.

He needs to go, he knows. He doesn’t want to, wants to stay watching the boy all night, follow him home and watch him sleep, but sooner or later one of the combatants is going to look in his direction, and then they’ll notice him, and that would not be good.

He ducks away from the alley, and wraps his coat around himself, trying and failing to banish the image of the beautiful laughing boy, blood dripping from his knuckles, from his mind. The boy is just that, little more than a child, and taking an interest in him could only result in being noticed, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to get the image out of his head. The fire of obsession is already burning in him, and he knows that nothing will satiate it but making that child his own.

He’s not thinking clearly he decides. He needs to get laid.

He's never used a prostitute before, never seen the need when a smile and a compliment was usually enough to persuade a woman into his bed, but he’s still scarred, and anyway he’d passed this girl on the street, pale skin dotted with moles, so like the beautiful boy that’s still filling his mind, and he'd known he had to have her.

It turns out to be a good decision, his mind too overloaded with the experience of feeling again, after so long, to worry about his partner's pleasure. And that’s a good thing too, because he’s never usually interested in sex without pain, or manipulation, but the intensity of the pleasure is enough, this time.

He apologizes afterwards, being charming a habit he cultivated long ago, tells her someone so beautiful deserves better, and she kisses his cheek and tells him he's sweet.

Harley wrinkles his nose at him, clearly offended that he’d gone to someone else for satisfaction, and says that she hopes he didn’t do it in her car. He wonders how much more horrified she’d be if she knew he was thinking about a child when he came, and can’t keep from laughing.

He has to soothe her afterward, apologize, and tell her it meant nothing, crawl on his belly to her as though she’s the one with the power, but it’s worth it, because soon he won’t need her any more, and the humiliation he’s inflicted on himself will only make the sensation of her neck snapping all the sweeter.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love
> 
> Find me on tumblr at gluttonforpunsihment


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